Mon Jul 14, 2008 at 23:00

In looking back at the MSM treatment of Hillary Clinton over the course of the primary season, there was an expected eruption of misogyny -- from Chris Matthews Greatest Hits and The Tweety Effect, to the infamous Hillary nutcracker -- yet what I found most interesting was the handwringing over the whole matter. Similarly, there was desperation by some on the left (and right) to declare 2008 a "post-racial" election; they saw their hopes dashed as the bloody chum was tossed out to the hungry media sharks by Clinton surrogates and the usual GOP shills, rife with allusions, counter-charges and just plain old race-baiting idiocy (see Geraldine Ferraro, Andrew Cuomo, Bob Johnson).

Women who run for political office -- as well as wives of candidates -- undergo an extraordinary amount of scrutiny by the mainstream media. Given the nature of the demographics in most newsrooms and the need for eyeballs and revenue, there is a strong desire to cater to low-info, image and celebrity-obsessed America by playing into the superficial aspects of what a women in the public eye should look like.

I attended the International Gay and Lesbian Leadership Conference conference in 2006; the annual event gives openly LGBT elected and appointed officials a chance to get together to hear war stories about running for public office, and they share ideas and strategies on how to run successful campaigns. At the women's roundtable, women at all levels of elective office discussed the consistent advice given by consultants to openly gay lesbians -- everyone has an opinion about what you should wear, the amount of makeup you need, the kind of haircut you must have in order to lower the "fear factor" with potential voters -- it can be ludicrous. One has to sufficiently "femme up" for public political consumption, as well as be on top of your issues, lest people get distracted by thoughts of your sexual orientation.

Turning to Michelle Obama, there's been baiting of a different sort, most recently revealed in the "misunderstood satire" of the New Yorker's cover art. Editor David Remnick, has come under quitea bitof fire for the decision to run Barry Blitt's illustration. Remnick's defense:

I ran the cover because I thought it had something to say. What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama's - both Obamas' - past, and their politics. I can't speak for anyone else's interpretations, all I can say is that it combines a number of images that have been propagated, not by everyone on the right but by some, about Obama's supposed "lack of patriotism" or his being "soft on terrorism" or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers.

He neglected to take the direct route and refer specifically to Angela Davis when describing the imagery used by Blitt. A good question to pose here is whether there was something else at work here -- a little unexamined white privilege, of course -- in what makes the generously Afro-ed Mrs. Obama on the cover so intimidating (aside from that rifle slung over her shoulder).

That hair. Some people of a certain age may have no clue who Angela Davis is, but what is deeply embedded in our culture is the sense that kinky hair = bad, ugly, dangerous, non-conformist, animalistic, sluttish, and unseemly -- a visual manifestation of what I call The Secret Black Radical Trojan Horse Agenda that Michelle Obama allegedly represents to paranoid voters who cast a ballot based on the Fear of a Black Planet, the wrath of the Negro Overlords. These people, who will not see the irony, believe that agenda will be fulfilled through the vessel of the pleasant, benign Michelle and Barack Obama not depicted on that cover. This imagery brings all of those fears to the surface, and that big kinky fro is part of the package.

I had been blogging about the politics of hair for quite some time before people started to take the matter seriously (I was also in a documentary about it). The tipping point on the blog was the Don Imus "nappy headed hos" debacle, and the fallout from that in the media gave people a window into the deeply held views -- including self-loathing of black women -- about natural hair. Its very nature screams disobedience to some people, including those who thankfully leave their political correctness at the door so the pathology can be exposed. From my post on March 31, 2006, Neal Boortz just lets it fly:

BOORTZ: For instance, or for goodness sakes, jump in and I'm gonna say -- I'm gonna start out with something controversial. I saw Cynthia McKinney's new hair-do. Have you seen it, Belinda?SKELTON: No.

BOORTZ: She looks like a ghetto slut.SKELTON: Well, how is it?

BOORTZ: It's just -- it's hideous.SKELTON: Is it braided? Or --

BOORTZ: No, it's not braided. It just flies away from her head in every conceivable direction. It looks like an explosion in a Brillo pad factory. It's just hideous. To me, that hairstyle just shows contempt for -- no, it's not an Afro. I mean, no, it just shows contempt for the position that she holds and the body that she serves in. And, I'm sorry, there's just no other way to -- it's just a hideous and horrible looking --

...MARSHALL: It looks better than the braids she was wearing.BOORTZ: No, the braids had some dignity. They had some class.

MARSHALL: The braids had dignity?BOORTZ: They had more class than this thing.

MARSHALL: This says, you know, kinda 2000s, you know, stepping up to the plate. Contemporary look, you know?BOORTZ: She looks like Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence.

More recently, the paranoia about the Black Radical Trojan Horse and Michelle Obama reached a fever pitch with the breathless rantings of Larry Johnson, who made an ass out of himself promoting a non-existent tape of Mrs. Obama screaming the mucho-retro "whitey" in a public venue.

So with that coursing through the veins of the blogosphere and the MSM, it is no surprise to see how the "radical" Michelle Obama would be portrayed on the cover, satire or no satire.

It is what lies beneath the polite discourse, and it is an uncomfortable subject to have a frank, but constructive dialogue about because race is a third rail topic. It gets a superficial workout, but never examines the white privilege, much the same as male privilege is not explored in the context of women in politics.

UPDATE: I forgot to add my shameless self-promotion - that shows you I'm not good at this.

The Raleigh News & Observer recently did a long feature on Pam's House Blend by Sadia Latifi,"Blogger gets respect: Durham resident writes on progressive issues." The article was a great opportunity give people a peek at how the mainstream media covers blogs, and to help those less familiar with new media to learn about what we do out here on the Web. It's also good timing because: 1) The blog just turned 4 years old, and 2) The Blend is one of only two NC-based credentialed blogs that will cover the Democratic National Convention, and one of only two-LGBT focused blogs credentialed.

If you're so inclined, please consider adding to the ChipIn tip jar to help us fund this trip (I have 5 front pagers going) by clicking the link below, as we have to cover all expenses to get to Denver. You can also embed the below widget on a post or blog page.

In looking back at the MSM treatment of Hillary Clinton over the course of the primary season, there was an expected eruption of misogyny -- from Chris Matthews Greatest Hits and The Tweety Effect, to the infamous Hillary nutcracker -- yet what I found most interesting was the handwringing over the whole matter.

because of her position on the war. That alienated a huge portion of the Democratic base, so that when the media went into full frenzy over "cleavage-gate" she didn't get the support she should have, because so many liberals were mad at her.

This is the lesson from the Bush era. Bush could withstand any amount of pressure from the left because the right-wing had adopted him. Any attacks on "my guy" after that simply caused them to rally harder to the President. You see this even today, when 60% of Republicans STILL love Bush!

There wasn't the push-back from Democrats because 1/2 the party were angry at her anyway. And her frankly racist arguments "only I can win in Appalachia" didn't help.

As for the New Yorker cover, I too though it was depicting Angela Davis until people started commenting and I realized it was supposed to be Michelle Obama.

It's going to take a black woman, ACTUALLY BEING in the White House -- and not having it fall down or have Michelle "pimp-it-out" like MTV Cribs before white America realizes that a black woman in the White House isn't automatically a sign that the end-times are here.

I think it's a generational thing. Older white Americans still pine for the "good old days" when blacks weren't prominent in America.

Most of them are going to have to die off unfortunately before we stop hearing the constant whining about "traditional values."

I, for one, wrote a letter to the editor (unpublished, of course) on that stupid WaPo article, even though I have not been a Clinton fan. It was so egregiously stupid, slimy, and sexist.

(And we have to keep pushing our "older white American" relatives, neighbors, and coworkers to catch up with the times and become more open-minded and open-hearted. It is possible, but it's an ongoing, one-on-one job.)

I don't quite agree with you (or apparently any other blogger who's views I generally share) about the cover, but I thought this post was really interesting. That Neal Boortz transcript is apalling. The Imus/Lou Dobbs racist comments (while also appalling) strike me as having some kind of accidental aspect to them. The men are clearly racist, but maybe they didn't actually mean to say it in public. I can almost feel bad for them at the same time as I push for their public humiliation/resignation.

But the Boortz thing... holy crap. That looks like a pretty clearly premeditated racist screed he spewed out there. That type of completely honest white supremacy is horrifying.

Anyway, I've been meaning to make your blog a more regular read, which I'll certainly do now. Thanks again for taking the time to post over here.

If sexual insecurity is behind much of the misogyny directed at Hillary Clinton (fear of the ball-breaker), then it also has to be part of the hysterical reaction to Michelle Obama. Going way out on a limb here, since so many whites associate heightened sexuality with African-Americans, then the fear of Michelle Obama might incorporate some of the fear of the ball-breaker (but not so much as Hillary Clinton), but also just plain fear of sexual inadequacy.

The Cynthia McKinney rant is just bizarre, and I think we need to remember that she has in part been pilloried and worse in some quarters because of her support for the Palestinians. That was behind the money that flowed into Georgia when she was defeated in a congressional primary, forgot the year--2004? I'm sure there is some residual anger over that.

I said "Obama and Angela Davis? Boy, that's reaching." Then I started seething, not so much about Barack Obama (the terrorist/Muslim/"Afro-Leninist" thing is getting so old), but about the way Michelle Obama was portrayed, and how easily the image grasped at the stereotypes about black women and what is perceived as dangerous.

Then again, if people weren't so hyped up on the fear factor and had gone for the benevolent Negro image, we might see a handkerchief on Michelle's head complete in Mammy regalia.

An excellent analysis of why Michelle Obama's path is filled with the landmines known as the Strong Black Woman (SBW) syndrome is at The Coup Magazine:

She can't be funny. She probably shouldn't work. After all, if she wants to counter the SBW stereotype and make her husband appear to be in charge, she cannot have a career. But when she quits her job, her motivation and commitment are called into question, and she risks losing credibility in the eyes of feminists. She can never have a hair out of place, appear aggressive, or ever be shown working out (one of her favorite activities), lest she characterized by someone as a "nappy headed ho." In light of this constant and very public criticism, Michelle Obama can never quite be herself without being stereotyped as the aforementioned SBW-a categorization that could potentially destroy her husband's presidential campaign. While Ms. Obama is (and would be considered even more so if she were to become First Lady) an incredible role model for black women and girls everywhere, it is rather disappointing that her personality and achievements must be scaled back in order to make her more appealing to Americans who are afraid to think beyond their comfort zones and recognize that a black woman can be an equal without being a threat.

It's not only a "hair out of place", I will argue that Mrs. Obama wouldn't be able to wear a natural hairstyle either - afro (short or long), twists, or locs. That would put cultural "change" into overload for a good chunk of the American people, given so many black women have internalized racism that they never question why they regularly apply toxic chemicals to their hair to straighten out the kinks.

is worn braided or natural, and Sasha Obama's hair is natural, although both children usually wear it back.
At what age will this become fraught and loaded to the public eye? Will that come along with adolescence? In other words, would burgeoning sexuality be a/the significant factor at play?

Young girls are usually allowed to have their hair natural for some time, usually 8 or 9 before some go to the lye. However, I was subjected to the hot comb to "tame" my kinks into submission at an early age. From a post I wrote about the experience:

I am old enough to have experienced the "pleasure" of the thermal hot comb -- you rested it over the gas flame of the stove to heat it up. Then the pressing oil was carefully applied to your hair and that comb sizzled through the kinks till it was bone straight, hissing as you prayed the comb didn't touch your scalp. This is what black women did to emulate straight hair. I say emulate because all it took was water or merely a humid day to revert the hair back to its natural state. But that was the only acceptable style for the working black woman working in the dominant culture.

...The status quo is still straightened hair, even though we see more natural styles in vogue now. Black women are unfortunately still chastised by family and significant others not to 1) cut their hair or 2) let it be kinky. It's one of those "dirty laundry" matters that people don't want to discuss openly, but when you have such poisonous, enabled self-loathing, it needs sunlight upon it. Look at this ad. It implies that the woman got the job because her hair was chemically straightened. The self-loathing is so culturally ingrained, so pathological -- there is nothing wrong with our hair, but nearly every signal received by the dominant culture is that it needs to be "corrected."

As you mentioned, the Obama children wear it pulled back -- the bottom line is rarely is the hair "free" as straight hair is allowed to be.

I found to be psychologically inhibiting in of itself, when I was in architecture school and had to do it daily. It becomes a type of masking in it's own right, and it's the obvious counterpoint to "letting your hair down." Although, ouch, the lye treatment you describe sounds infinitely worse.

I started reading your blog regularly after I moved to NC
in December. It's quickly moved to the top of my list. Thanks for all you do there and for this great post.

As a white woman raised in a mostly-white suburban setting, I had no concept of what straightening black hair involved. I don't think I gave it a second's thought that the few AA girls at my high school all had "relaxed" hair, and that the AA boys kept their hair very short.

Some years ago Mothering magazine ran a feature on how to take care of your black child's hair. The article talked about various styles and referred to an afro as "freedom hair". Only after reading your post do I get what "freedom hair" means to people who were raised with a self-loathing attitude toward natural hair.

And speaking of navigating landmines, I was surprised by the mainstream media fawning over Michelle's dress on The View. You would think they would pick apart anything she wore as too flirty or slutty.

I thought maybe they just are so New York-centric that they genuinely don't know how an unfortunately large part of the public feels--people who probably don't even know who Angela Davis was, but know a scary black female when they see one.

They've been very supportive of Obama, running a pretty flattering profile in 2005, I think, and other pieces since. They are a pretty liberal magazine and have been (especially in the last 3-4 years) very, very critical of Bush.

Being of a certain age, when I hear this sort of stuff going on, all I can think is "scared white boys peeing in their pants." Because, yes, I was around when Angela Davis first exploded on the scene, and it was patently obvious at the time that that's what was going on.

Davis was Herbert Macuse's prize student, meaning she was an intellectual heir to the Frankfurt School, and no rightwing pinhead stood a snowball's chance in hell of going toe-to-toe with her. Plus, she was totally fearless.

As a pink diaper baby raised in a house with jazz, folk and blues, I grew up taking the existence of strong black women for granted, even though it was from their music, not from personal contact. So Angela Davis made perfect sense to me from the word "go." In fact, my reaction to her was pretty much, "Well, it's about time!"

Forty years farther on, it's amazing how little has changed. That same privileged white boy pants-pissing fear still infects everything in our public discourse, and because they are so earth-shatteringly stupid they have remade our political discourse into little more than a subliterate code that can express little else except for that self-same fear.

That's how it happens that we're more afraid of terrorists hiding in caves than we once were of an entire nuclear arsenal of tens of thousands of weapons. And it's how Michelle Obama inspires images of Angela Davis with an assault rifle.

At some point, we are going to have to stop being run by these craven pissants' adolescent fears, or else we are literally going to destroy ourselves. In fact, we've already made an enormous start in that direction.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

This is the 2008 version of "Buy one terrorist, get one black radical militant free".

I'm guessing, though, that as stupid and offensive as this NYer cover was, it's not going to change many votes. The bigots were never going to vote for him anyway, strictly on skin color, and the rest was just confirmation in their small minds. Mais, tout le monde est gris...

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

from the Angela Davis, scary fro-wearing black militant, going to come and get your pretty white daughter and turn your manly white son into a dope-smoking hippy radical, era of overt white fear, which has since transformed itself into a slightly more subtle but still quite visible form of white paranoia. But I grew up in its immediate shadow in the mid to late-70's, when its lingering aftereffects were everywhere to be found. Archie Bunker and his many spinoffs, the rise of the Moral Majority and ascension of Reagan, endless attacks on welfare cheats and "turn 'em loose" liberal judges who were unleashing thousands of black devils on the populace, attempts to "tame" black militantism by culturally appropriating it in fashion, music, slang, movies, etc. And in college (one that had one of the more famous student building takeovers in the late 60's and which, interestingly, had the effect pushing today's neocons, who back then were still liberals and leftists, further to the right), I recall attending a lecture by the not very scary-looking Eldridge Cleaver.

So I had no problem "getting" the Davis reference (one wonders if they're also implying that Michelle is a lesbian, like Davis, although I've not yet heard anyone bring this up). It was a hideously bad attempt at "satire" that I can't help but wonder might actually be the artists's and editors' way of working through their own ambivalence about electing a black man as president. As in, "Hey, we're so cool about it that we can make fun of it and the people who aren't so cool about it, by pretending to be one of them, heh". Except, there's nothing cool about it at all. It's just sad. David Remnick is no Norman Lear.

Strange how a cartoon that might have been funny in a 1970's Mad Magazine setting is clearly so inappropriate and offensive in a 2000's New Yorker Setting. In terms of race relations, in some ways we've actually regressed from back then. Reagan changed all that, of course, and now we have to deal with this. Racists, bigots, homophobes, corporatists, free market nutjobs, neocons and assorted other faux conservative creeps have set this country back so far, I have no idea how many years it'll take to fix it. No thanks to the New Yorker.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

I remember, way back when, Angela Davis being presented as a scary weirdo in the media. In more recent years, I often come across her name in the notes and bibliographies of scholarly books. I'm impressed at how she's apparently been able to focus on her work and her interests, and to ignore the nasty treatment from the talking heads and typing morons.

I hadn't heard of him until this article caused me to look him up. I ask because I've never known any straight guys who had the slightest interest in hair. Oh, some of us feel constrained to attempt to look interested on occasion, but deep down would just as soon discuss which ketchup has a prettier color or the faucet handles most favored in Portugal.

I bring this up because hair is one of a number of areas that do, and probably always will, keep the genders in overlapping but not identical universes. Which in turn adds significant difficulty to efforts by women to break into mainstream politics. There are -- for lack of a better term -- gender-based cultural differences that put female candidates in a near impossible situation. Either they go all-out "feminine" and become vulnerable to all the kneejerk associations that go with that, or they visibly struggle to tone down the feminine qualities and look packaged and fake.

I should hasten to add that this is not some male conspiracy: most of the slams against prominent women in "serious" fields come from women, and less so from men. Hillary's candidacy, I think, at least brought us a step further along the road to recognizing and ultimately reconciling the contradictions. I couldn't vote for her because of her politics, but she did do a brilliant job of opening the gate for other women --just as Obama is doing for not-whites (and, of late, with equally unfortunate policy).

Last night it occurred to me why The New Yorker failed to recognize the problems with this cover. Most of The New Yorker's cartoons satirize clueless affluent white folk -- they poke fun at themselves and their readership.

In that light, the editors saw this cover as a compliment -- they thought they were being ironic about one of their own. But as African-Americans, the Obamas will never be part of the affluent white tribe. The state of race relations in America preclude that from happening.

That the editors of The New Yorker couldn't see the racism in this cover is evidence of their cluelessness, not of malice.

I think another thing is how deeply sarcasm and satire are embedded in the New England/New York culture (at least the white/1920's-era immigrant part of it), that you just take it for granted. I don't know about African-Americans in the Northeast, but I think generally people in the Midwest and South don't have that as much. I grew up in Massachusetts, and when I visited my family for Thanksgiving a few years ago, it occurred to me that virtually everything that we said in conversation meant exactly the opposite of how it was phrased (along the lines of "wow, Bush is really doing great things for this country; and doesn't McCain's economic plan sound great?").

Main element in the New Yorker cover that even "progressives"
(4.00 / 1)

have accepted without comment is the underlying notion that being a Muslim is an inherently bad thing. Everyone praises Obama for moving away from it so forcefully and reassuring us that he's a Jesus-Lover.

Where is the outrage at this most vile depiction of Muslims?

No where to be found.

Obama, too, has joined this herd, running away from Islam like its some kind of plague.

Not about "labeling", its about embracing a right-wing frame
(0.00 / 0)

that equates being a Muslim with being a terrorist, or at least, supportive of such. Or, more precisely, NOT embracing that frame of reference. No one ever claimed that being a national leader is easy.

I don't see how reaching out to segment of the US population that has been unfairly demonized (at least) since 9/11/01 could be considered "toxic". Especially for a party and a nominee that make such a grand show of their tolerance and multi-culturalism.

But my post was pointed as much at the M$M and netroots as at Obama, and no one here is running for president.